NC Can't take hit of new EPA regs

by Prior Gibson, former legislator, NC Forestry Association, New Bern Sun Journal, June 20, 2015.

North Carolina’s air quality has improved so dramatically in the past few decades that last year the state did not issue a single alert for high ozone levels. Such alerts used to be common. In 2000, roughly a third of the state’s 100 counties failed to meet the Environmental Protection Agency’s ozone standards. Today, every county is compliant. And yet the state might soon take an unprecedented economic hit because of new EPA ozone regulations the state does not need and cannot afford.

The current EPA ozone standard of 75 parts per billion (ppb) was set in 1998. In 2011, when the EPA was considering lowering the standard to between 60-70 ppb, President Obama ordered the move stopped. The EPA’s own analysis calculated the cost at between $19 billion-$90 billion, and the president was not going to let the slowly recovering economy receive such a blow.Yet here we are just a few years later and the EPA has announced that it wants to lower the standard to between 65-70 ppb. The attainment costs would be astronomical, creating serious and lasting economic damage in states, like North Carolina, that have very good air quality.In February, NERA Economic Consulting conducted an extensive study of the proposed standards onbehalf of the National Association of Manufacturers. NERA found that at a standard of 65 ppb, North Carolina’s Gross State Product would be $42 billion lower from 2017-2040. That’s just shy of Montana’s entire 2014 Gross State Product. (https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/MTNGSP) The average household would experience a reduction in annual consumption of $250. That’s money that could pay for back to school supplies or two months’ worth of electric bills. (http://www.electricitylocal.com/states/north-carolina/)

At the 65 ppb standard, the state would suddenly go from every county being at last in compliance with EPA ozone regulations to more than 3/4 (77, per the NERA study) out of compliance. To put it bluntly, that is absurd. No reasonable assessment of North Carolina’s air quality would determine that fewer than ј of the state’s counties should be in compliance with federal standards.As an example of how this would directly hurt average North Carolinians, consider the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources’ proposal to end auto emissions testing in more than half of the 48 counties where it is now required. According to DENR, emissions testing could be eliminated in 31 counties because the tests “are no longer necessary to protect air quality” in those counties. But if the EPA drops its standard to 65 ppb, the testing would have to continue in four of the counties where it is slated to end: Orange, Granville, Pitt and Rockingham. Right off the bat, the lower standard would cost families $16.40 per vehicle per year even though the tests are no longer necessary to protect air quality.

Having to pay unnecessary costs to meet unnecessarily low air quality standards would not be the burden of families in those four counties alone. For manufacturers, farmers, transportation companies and many others, the costs of compliance could be astronomical. That $42 billion reduction in North Carolina’s Gross State Product will not be extracted from oil barons in Texas. It will be felt by truckers, farmers and factory workers in cities and small towns throughout North Carolina.The negative economic effects would ripple through the state economy. Compliance with these regulations would be demanded, and businesses would have no choice but to divert money from productive uses to compliance efforts. That could be justified if the standard were essential to protect public health. But the EPA’s proposed standards are not.In fact, they are so far beyond what is necessary, and their justification so weak, that the state secretary of DENR wrote to the U.S. EPA administrator in March to ask for reconsideration of the proposal. Secretary Donald van der Vaart wrote that the standards were based on shaky research and pointed out that “there is a lack of statistically significant data for establishing a NAAQS at concentrations less than 72 parts per billion.”The EPA’s proposed ozone standards would inflict serious damage on North Carolina’s economy while producing no commensurate benefit for the people or the planet. Even those of us who consider ourselves pro-environment need to recognize that this is no example of good government in action; this is politics masquerading as science.

Pryor Gibson is the executive vice president of the NC Forestry Association.